Michael Bloomberg Confirms He Is Weighing ‘All the Options’ for Presidential Run

Getty8 Feb 2016

Gun-control proponent Michael Bloomberg told the Financial Times Feb. 8 that he is weighing “all the options” for a presidential run.

Bloomberg, a billionaire liberal and a pillar of the establishment, told the Financial Times that he “[finds] the level of discourse and discussion distressingly banal and an outrage and an insult to the voters.”

That statement is a step closer to an actual candidacy compared to Jan. 23, when CBS New York/AP quoted unidentified sources close to Bloomberg saying he was willing to spend $1 billion to win the White House.

“Bloomberg would strongly consider running if the general election looked like it would be a contest between Democrat Bernie Sanders and Republicans Donald Trump or Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX),” said the Jan. 23 report. That was echoed Jan. 25, when CBS New York reported that “Bloomberg is taking a look at the 2016 presidential landscape and putting the pieces in place for a possible presidential run.”

Now Bloomberg himself is confirming what the sources said, emphasizing his intolerance for a race where Sanders is leading with Democratic voters in New Hampshire and Donald Trump is leading with Republicans in every poll.

Bloomberg would run as an independent if he enters the race. ABC News reports that “he would need to get his name on the ballot in all 50 states to have a viable chance of victory.”

That will require Bloomberg to “obtain a certain number of signatures” in each state. Ballot Access News’s Richard Winger said the cost of getting on all the ballots alone will be “between $2.5 and $3 million.”

AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.